
Recommended Reading: Google's biggest hardware flop
The week's best writing on technology and more.
The Pixel 5 is one of the best small Android phones we’ve used in quite some time, and Google’s clean, feature-rich approach to Android remains alluring. That said, we’re not sure it’ll make Pixel fans out of people who didn’t already prefer them. That’s partly because of unusual missteps like a lackluster speaker setup and still camera performance that doesn’t beat out the competition the way it used to. More than anything, though, the Pixel 5 is a victim of circumstance: It’s a mostly solid smartphone that would’ve rated higher if some of its rivals weren’t such great values.